


IIII_DONT_HATE_YOUU

by ntd_fx1



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-30 02:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15086810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ntd_fx1/pseuds/ntd_fx1
Summary: portal 2 chamber 18, from the turret's point-of-view.





	IIII_DONT_HATE_YOUU

As I stood there, on that little island of one lone panel, surrounded by what the announcements only described as "hazard water", HER command echoed within me.

  
"Just stay put and try to kill something."

  
Hours upon hours of staring at a wall; another, much larger island beneath it, with a glass wall on the left and a beautiful, brilliant, blue pathway extending to the ceiling. My programming screamed at me not to stare, not to divert from HER orders, but I couldn't help it. For a fleeting few nanoseconds (exactly 2.45168, for the record), I pointed my laser sight to the blue wall, the pale red beam breaking upon contact with it, and anything behind the path registered as nothing but null data. Curious. Even further to the right of that was a Thermal Discouragement Beam, continuously shining down at the floor.

  
A few more hours of staring at the wall when HER voice shot through the PA.

  
"-Oh, come on. If it makes you feel any better, they abandoned you at birth, so I very seriously doubt they'd even want to see you."

  
Then, a figure jumped through the overseer's office, disappearing gracefully behind the pathway. The figure was draped in orange - a stained, soot-covered orange but still orange nonetheless - and cradled in her arms the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Two strange sounds rung out, and with the sudden change in position, I responded.

  
"Searching..."

  
Suddenly, the figure appeared behind the glass wall, with a portal right behind her. I locked onto her, and my guns automatically rolled out, but she still remained behind cover.   
She had a delicate, strange chassis - it rumbled ever-so-slightly after movement. Her servos made no sound, her photoreceptors made no light, and I couldn't even fathom what the strange black assembly on the top of her head was - an antenna array, maybe? She carried a knowing allure to her; she deftly navigated the chamber as if the facility was a long-time friend. Could I be her friend? Perhaps I could learn about her, and she could learn about me - that’s what friends do, right?

 

“Hello, friend!”

 

Two more sounds, and she disappeared. Then, for a long stretch of time, I neither saw nor heard anything of her.

Oh dear. Was she dead? I didn't recall shooting her. My search subroutine ran, and I beckoned out to her:

 

"Could you come over here?"  
  
  
No response. A quick Target Presence Calculation determined, beyond a doubt, that she was dead. I felt...something strange within me. This mysterious, orange-clad wonder, now gone forever. Maybe it was not meant to be. Maybe SHE was punishing me for thinking like this. My guns rolled back in, my servos crying as if they wanted to bear my pain for me.

 

  
"Good night."

 

  
I dreamt I was a faint red glow amongst endlessly shifting columns of black. I felt my shape - it was different, ever-changing, not the static, still body I once felt. I leapt and soared through the black, with no subroutine or factory override telling me "why". There was no voice telling me that these actions were pointless, no line of strictly-defined, cross-checked, peer-revised code yelling at me to preserve my battery charge. I landed on a column, and for a second my accelerometers (incorrectly) warned me that I was going to fall over. I didn't know what was what in this new body of mine, but I also didn't mind. I rolled around on the platform I now lay on, then I got up and started hopping, and spinning. My servos, if I had any, made no noise. I missed them, but just a little.   
  
  
"Hello?"

  
Suddenly, I was shapeless no more. My guns flew out, and I saw the chamber again. The Thermal Discouragement Beam now hit two relays on the platform across me, but more importantly, directly situated in front of my laser sight (albeit partially behind a Thermal Redirection Cube), was the figure again.

And I felt it. By both my own programming and HER command, I felt myself opening fire on her. She hid behind the cube for a few moments, and as hard as I willed my rounds to do the opposite, a few struck her. Every command of my own to disarm myself was near-instantaneously overwritten by my programming. HER voice replaced them - "THIS IS WHO YOU ARE." - who I was meant to be, who SHE commanded me to be. I loved HER, but I also loved her. My lone eye continued sighting her, continued targeting the most optimal firing points of a being that I barely understood, as round upon round exploded from me. 

"THIS IS WHO YOU ARE.“

And a bullet pierced her.

“THIS IS WHO YOU ARE.”

A red fluid poured from one of her actuators, soaking the orange fabric that covered her. Her face contorted in pain.

“THIS IS WHO YOU ARE.”

She persevered. As did I, and HER through me.

My friend began to manipulate the Thermal Redirection Cube, the Handheld Portal Device suspending it in the air. The red beam sharply changed course as it met the cube, and I then realized its new target.

My instincts fell silent. What just a few milliseconds ago was yelling at me to continue my salvo of bullets now had no voice whatsoever. I stopped firing, and retracted my guns. My motors squealed under the intense heat, and I felt gears fuse and melt as I desperately tried to offer surrender, free of my monstrous programming.

“Please stop.”

The beam burnt just as brightly as before.

“You’ve made your point.”

The servos were non-responsive. My vision was no longer. A crackling sound came from my left, and HER voice came from my right.

“I feel awful about that surprise. Tell you what? Let’s give y-”

A glow of red in a sea of black.  I was shapeless once again, ever-changing and molding. Columns they were no more, now just endless, formless masses of darkness. They enveloped me, giving peace where there was pain and rest where there was exhaustion.

It didn’t register to me whether I actually said them or not, but as my circuits bubbled and my capacitors fried, I wanted to think I left my friend a few words:

 

“I don’t hate you.”


End file.
